[Gllug] Underclocking an Athlon

John Edwards john_ed at cornerstonelinux.co.uk
Mon Oct 1 12:51:16 UTC 2001


On Mon, Oct 01, 2001 at 01:39:13PM +0100, will wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Walid" <walidshaari at yahoo.com>
> To: <gllug at linux.co.uk>
> Sent: Monday, October 01, 2001 1:02 PM
> Subject: Re: [Gllug] Underclocking an Athlon
> 
> 
> > > As the big Athlons have a habit of being as hot as a burning coals
> > > when running in a small machine, is there any way to UNDERclock them
> > > (eg running a 1.4GHz at 1.2GHz) ?
> > >
> > > I would rather have a 10% slower machine than a dead machine.
> 
> > In that note what is the average temp.?  Mine is always around 47 DegC.
> > have you seen any mobo that shuts down when the temp goes up?
> 
> Have a look at:
> 
> http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/01q3/010917/

Thanks, but it did not reassure me.

>From the index:
* Intel Pentium 4 2 GHz - System Slowdown
* Intel Pentium III 1 GHz - System Hang / CPU Alive
* AMD Athlon 1.4 GHz (Thunderbird) - System Crash / Death Of Processor
* AthlonMP 1.2 GHz (Palomino) - System Crash / Thermal Diode Fails / CPU Dead

On the Athlon Thunderbird:
"The removal of the heat sink proves to be fatal. In less than a second 
Athlon 1400 dies the heat death.... AMD did not bless the Thunderbird core 
with ANY thermal protection whatsoever."

On the Athlon Palamino (Mobile and SMP chip):
"The thermal diode of Palomino is unable to react quickly enough."

> it would seem that they have a limited ability to cope with the heat. 

When it comes to the Athlon "limited ability" meaning melting at 370C.

> Also
> I got some heat transfer gel stuff from TCR on Saturday, you might want to
> look at getting some of that.

I've got a huge tube of the stuff from Maplins for a couple of quid and 
only used a fraction of it. It's still money well spent.

> Will.

At the current prices of Athlons vs. Pentium 3/4 I wonder if it's 
worth buying a backup chip and heatsink ?


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|    John Edwards    Email: John.Edwards at uk.com                          |
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